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First Impressions

Thursday 23 June 2005 | 2 Comments

English, English, English -- English everywhere. That’s the most shocking thing for me of late. I can eavesdrop without effort. In fact, I found myself eavesdropping in the airports even when I didn’t want to. I ducked into a newsagents at Newark airport and almost lost control of my bladder, so many English books I saw. Flipping through stations on the TV (strange enough to have a television), I didn’t have to decide, “Okay, is the English underneath the monotone dubbing loud and clear enough that I can understand it, or should I not even try.” (An old habit I never quite lost. In Poland, there’s one man reading the translated text with the original language in the background. When I first arrived, I tried desperately to hear the English underneath, and I never lost the habit once I could understand the Polish monotone.) English, English, everywhere. Except when I hear Spanish.

I’m in food heaven too. So much food I haven’t eaten in so long, and so much food that Kinga has never eaten.

Humus -- Ripped the tub open in the parking lot and took two fingers-full there.
Shrimp -- I cooked shrimp with garlic and cilantro our first evening here. When we bought the cilantro, I just buried my face in its greeny goodness and inhaled deeply, walking around supermarket afterwards with a chlorophyll buzz and a grin.
Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia — Unable to eat the whole tub, but we made a dent.
French roast coffee from freshly ground beans, with the leftovers chilled in the afternoon for iced coffee
Select, highly processed junk food, which I rarely eat, but from time to time is amazing (read: Pringles).

And there’s so much waiting…we’re going to be positively zepplinish if we’re not careful.

The trip back was relatively painless, though long. We left Krakow somewhat late because of the chaotic situation in the immigration area. Three officers checking passports for two international flights. Really smart.

Our connecting flight out of Newark got canceled, so our mad dash from one end of the airport to the other (slight exaggeration, but…) was for naught. But in the process, we encountered a very nice immigration officer who, hearing that we were trying to make a connecting flight that was due to leave within the hour, made sure Kinga was the first of many to hand in her visa papers and getting fingerprinted (thank you Patriot Act). As I waited outside, he came back several times to tell me how things were progressing, for at the beginning, no one was processing them — they were all sitting in a room, staring at each other. “I’m going to try to see if I can’t get her first in line,” he explained, “Though I can’t promise anything.” I can’t imagine, honestly, a Polish immigration officer doing that.

W with the Pool

Saturday 18 June 2005 | 0 Comments

Farewell Party

Friday 17 June 2005 | 0 Comments

Final Days of School

Thursday 16 June 2005 | 0 Comments

Rainy Homophobia

Friday 10 June 2005 | 0 Comments

I’m sitting in our virtually empty apartment, which won’t be appended with “our” from Monday, I guess. I left the computer here so I’d have something to do during the long break. I’ve got an hour and a half now, it’s raining like crazy, with temperatures below 15 Celsius, and I’m not sure what to write about.

I could write about the attention homosexuality is getting in Poland these days, thanks to a canceled gay pride parade in Warsaw. Parade organizers didn’t fulfill all the obligations for a march, said Warsaw mayor Lech Kaczynski’s office. For example, they didn’t submit a plan for how to re-route traffic in the march area, and they didn’t pay to compensate for the money busses would lose by avoiding the parade route. Now if this had been a march for Polish veterans, I’m sure Kaczynski’s office would have been over backwards to help parade organizers. But concerning gay pride, there’ll be no bending in this country – sexual innuendo very much intended.

Last night, on a Cross-Fire type show, they were discussing the march. Some of the homophobes there were just amazing – they take this whole thing very personally. If you don’t want to see a gay pride parade, don’t watch. But of course the priest on the panel was talking about how “statistically” the “gay lifestyle” is harmful. Seventy percent of people with AIDs are gay; most pedophiles are gay pedophiles (or some ridiculous generalization like that); and so on. The priest actually said, “The homosexual lifestyle is a road to death.”

The parade organizer criticized the church, saying “Catholic” and “Fascist” in the same sentence. He now faces a lawsuit for saying that. In public, no less.

Of the people on the discussion panel, guess which ones were virtually foaming at the mouth at times? The homophobes, of course.

During the course of the show, there was a survey: Is there a problem with homophobia in Poland? Fifty-one percent said yes. Tomasz Lis, the host, commented on the station’s web site, though, the results were opposite: fifty-one percent said no.

Yes, I could write about homophobic Poland, but I don’t want to.

I could write about the weather. But what for? How much can I write about rain? It’s ridiculously cold, too. The temperature the last few days has topped out in the low 50’s. About ten days, it was literally forty degrees warmer. So the weather is not a good topic either.

Moving – there’s something. Packing so many boxes for shipping has made Kinga and me experts with tape. But who wants to read about taping?

Enough…

A Letter

Thursday 09 June 2005 | 0 Comments

My name is [GS] and I have an account with Plus GSM. In order to prove my identity, I offer the following information:

My telephone number is [deleted].
My account number is [deleted].
The account address is [deleted].
My parents’ first names are [deleted].
Lastly, I’m including a photocopy of my passport, which you have on file as well.

I am writing about two things. First, I would like the billing address changed for the remainder of my contract to: [deleted]

I called customer service and was informed that I can do this through the mail. I trust this is sufficient.

Second, I am declaring that I have no intention of renewing the contract. Do not renew it automatically. I realize that you want this done thirty days before the expiration of the contract, but I will be in America at that time and will be in no position to contact you. Not only that, but it is unreasonable to expect me to keep track of a cell phone contract that I will not even be using personally. Therefore, I am making the request now. Please bear in mind that if you do renew the contract against my wishes, as expressed here, the bills will go unpaid.

I must confess, though, that I’m very disappointed with your customer service and the ridiculous inability to perform such simple tasks by phone or internet. In addition, the 30-day-before time requirement for canceling the account is outrageous, and is nothing but an immoral attempt to trick unwitting customers into another contract, leaving them with the choice of continuing in an unwanted contract or paying an unjustifiably high cancellation penalty. As a company in an EU nation, you really should bring your customer service up to an appropriate level.

I appreciate your attention in this matter. Please send the appropriate confirmation to the above address.

Last Tango

Wednesday 08 June 2005 | 0 Comments

Kinga mentioned as we were getting ready for bed that this is “one of the last nights” we’d be sleeping in the apartment. “The next to last, actually,” I said, for we’re moving out tomorrow.

One of the most haunting and yet most disconcerting aspects of moving is the consciousness we have of being in a stream of “lasts.” The last time we’ll sleep in this apartment. The last time we’ll lug stuff up these steps.

The last morning coffee here.

Generally, we have no idea a “last” is approaching, though. They take us by surprise and can leave us reeling if it’s a significant last – the last time she talked to her father, for example. You’d think that foreknowledge is a good thing, then. But it tempers everything and makes every moment both indefinitely long and breathtakingly short.

Lying in bed last night, thinking these things, I recalled a poem by W. S. Merwin:

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without
knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in
life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

Coffee

Tuesday 07 June 2005 | 0 Comments

Heading back home--I had a break between lessons--I stopped at the shop across the street where I've done all my shopping for seven years to buy coffee. I picked up the big half-kilo package from habit and headed to the cashier.

"When will you be leaving?" she asked as she rung up my puchases.

"About two weeks. A little less," I replied. "But Kinga and I will be moving out of the apartment this Thursday," I continued.

So what are you buying this huge coffee for, you dolt, I thought.

Indeed, I should have saved money -- a few groszy (Polish cents, really), but money is money -- and bought the smaller coffee.

The weird things one has to take into consideration when moving...

Three Random June Thoughts

Tuesday 31 May 2005 | 0 Comments

One

June is finally here -- the month of our return. After four years in Poland, I’m moving back to America. After twenty-some years in Poland, Kinga is moving to America. Big transitions for both of us.

“You’re more European now,” she said last night, not commenting though on what I’m more European than. I suppose than I was. She mentioned the almost cliche change some Muslim men exhibit when, after marriage and returning home with their new wife, they suddenly revert to ultra Islam and become a new person -- much to the bride’s dismay. I suppose that’s what she meant -- more European than American, and her concern was about me becoming a fast-food bubba.

Two

In the process of packing, I found the old photos I’d taken before coming to Poland the first time, almost ten years ago now.

They were intended to be spare identification photos, though I doubt they’d suffice. Looking at them, I’m shocked at how much I’ve changed and how little I’ve realized that. I look in the mirror every day, after all, and so the changes -- receding hairline, more mature eyes, lack of the scars of adolescence -- slipped by me. I imagine that’s how it’ll be with Kinga as time passes. “What will she look like when she’s forty?” I ask myself, knowing the answer will still be “beautiful.” But it’s hard to imagine the marks time will make, and now I see it’s doubtful I’ll even notice until I look at our wedding album.

Three

Back to America. I haven’t been to the States in three years -- too-busy summers and a lack of money will do that to you. “Reverse culture shock” is something you hear about from time to time, and I’m wondering if it’s hovering there, a few weeks in the future. When I went back for the first time in 1998, after two years in Poland, the difference was profound. The quality of roads was something I’d totally forgotten about, so used to bumping along I’d become. The ability to understand almost everyone around me without trying felt almost like a dirty secret. “Do they realize I understand everything they’re saying?”

But most shocking was the choice -- fifty-seven varieties of everything. The entire row of paper products (paper towels, napkins, etc.) at Super Wal-Mart literally stopped me mid-stride. Channel after channel on the television, all in English. Restaurants for every conceivable palate and wallet.

And so I know the feeling of “My oh my” that awaits Kinga.